DSE

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Everything posted by DSE

  1. DSE
    Travis is a professional stunt man. Amongst his many talents, he's a skydiver with over 250 skydives under a parachute. He learned to skydive at Skydive Utah, and trained there for his famous motorcycle jump from the Hell Hole Bend portion of the eastern Grand Canyon. Having seen him in the air (with a rig on) the kid is a talented skydiver. It's not like he woke up one morning and decided to jump chuteless; he's been skydiving for five years. His ESPN book talks about skydiving as well, and the book was finished at least a year ago. Given the "why" he did it, (unless he violated a ruling by the FAA after he told them what he was going to do), I don't see the problem with it.
  2. DSE
    News flash: Dumbledore doesn't exist Dumbledore is ink on paper. Teletubbies don't exist either, but that didn't stop certain groups from banning them from their children.
  3. DSE
    he wasn't my student, but I was his videographer. Buddy.....wow. what a guy. Buddy had trained during WWII, for his parachute jumps, but during training, they didn't actually jump from planes (I never found out why). His unit was in the air, on their way to their destination when the battle was declared "over." Buddy didn't jump that day. He dreamed of jumping for most of his life. Last August, his twin grandsons bought him a tandem, and they were both on the load with him. Buddy talked quite a bit before the jump about his training, jumping from towers, learning to PLF, etc. At age 92, he took his jump, and cried on landing, as he felt he'd achieved a lifetime dream that he thought had been lost. He was incredibly grateful for the opportunity. he stayed around the DZ for the entire day, sharing stories and recounting his jump several times over. Quite a man whom I'll never forget, and who serves as a reminder that dreams never die.
  4. DSE
    Chuck, I'm sure folks are really enjoying the blog of your helmet. If I might make a suggestion that you keep it all in one thread, it would be easier to follow. Looking forward to whatever comes next!
  5. DSE
    Baksteen, were you there? Did you hear this sentence in context? I didn't. My point overall is twofold. ~I didn't hear the comment, and based on the way the post is written, it may not be in context. ~it seems there may or may not be a personal issue. The multiple subject points of the OP make it seem so, rightfully or wrongfully. All DZ's have asshats. I'm sure some think I'm one of them. Others don't. It's not for me (nor you) to judge whether "Yahoo" is a terrible skydiver or not. He may or may not be just an asshat who made a stupid comment in or out of context. On the other side of the coin, if this guy truly said this in the presented context, and has demonstrated this sort of attitude (outside of this one incident) then the DZO or DZM should likely be proactive and remove him from the DZ.
  6. DSE
    Agreeing with your post, this one paragraph doesn't fit into everything else you wrote. I feel you're right, jump numbers alone do not make a better skydiver. But if he's jumping with other people, he probably is a better skydiver. If being a bad tandem packer makes him a lesser skydiver, then I'm a terrible skydiver, because I've only packed tandems as part of a training class. But I have packed easy a couple thousand sport packjobs. Is there more to the story that what you've written?
  7. DSE
    jump it just once, and you'll void the warranty, if you care. Jump it more than once, and eventually the head will tear a nice big scratch in the disk. It only has a short buffer for shock protection, and this won't work above 10K anyway.
  8. DSE
    Wearing a big motorcycle helmet such as your Shoei is heavier than wearing a camera helmet. For kicks, I just grabbed my full-face motorcycle helmet and my Bonehead FTP with a light camera on top. m/c helmet weighs quite a bit more. In other words, if you don't know what you're doing, you could hurt yourself wearing a heavy, full-face m/c helmet. Have an instructor at your DZ check you out with the helmet before you try to jump it, unless you're willing to risk your neck.
  9. DSE
    Hostility now on both sides. My take as someone who works in the media world: Don't show up without all the pertinent information, expecting everyone wants to be a star just because you've got some juice. Skydiving community is media-shy for the most part. And having said that, any skydiver that allows the media to portray them where they don't have final cut...they're begging for trouble. It's in the writer/editor's best interest to create diametric viewpoints in this sort of show; no matter what...someone is gonna look really bad. It's the nature of the beast. We need a hero and a villian in everything we see. While I don't agree with it, a more or less anonymous post asking skydivers to become TV stars should expect a little hostility. For all you know...*I'm* the one posting as Renata Lopez.
  10. DSE
    it's probably relevant to an anonymous poster exploiting the sport without offering much information.
  11. DSE
    Not better; different. HC5 is EIS where HC7 is OIS. Both work fine for belly work, but some folks with some configurations have issues with OIS and freeflying. Norman Kent speculates that it's the burble and how it affects the minute movements of the head. Since I don't do headdown, it's not an issue for me. I also don't have issues in sit nor belly with the HC7, but there are some here who have.
  12. DSE
    Please keep us informed as you progress through this journey. Between you, Matt, and a couple others, I've pretty well made up my mind to attempt this as well, although I have virtually zero experience with epoxy.
  13. DSE
    36.5 would be appropriate. Cover the hammer head with cork (must be special photographic cork, or it may mar the glass when you pop it out and subsquently back in. Cork is important. If you can't find a 36.5mm hammer, put your thumb on the glass portion of the lens, then hit your thumb as hard as you can. the glass will pop out, and you won't give a damn about how much the lens leaks in the future.
  14. DSE
    Shit, is 37mm small or big? Depends on how experienced...never mind. For palm-corder type cams, 37mm is large. Most /many are in the 23-30.5mm size. Once you jump from palmcorder/handicam to small camcorder, then it stabilizes (more or less) at 52mm, 55mm, or 57mm.
  15. DSE
    Hoping so is one thing. Actually occurring is entirely another. A well-known energy drink company sent an email just a few weeks ago wanting to inquire about filming certain types of BASE stunts. I was very happy to send them off to another photographer. Not only am I not a BASE jumper (does a bridge jump make me a BASE jumper?) , but the concept of shooting a BASE jump a commercially-motivated jump seems to be diametric to the BASE community. But...Travis' jump was for the benefit of a film. I don't know how/if he truly ignored the permitting process or not. If so, it's not just bad for skydiving, but for the film industry as well.
  16. DSE
    I don't think I want to be your new "herp." That sounds scary. If you didn't find EndItAll, you can download it free from here get it fast, before PC Mag pulls it from the web again.
  17. DSE
    I believe the correct response is "Graphic." Even knowing ASP...it's a PITA to do this. Make 3-4 different resolutions/aspects, then fuggeddabboouddit, IMO.
  18. DSE
    VASST.com has Adobe Premiere training as well. There is a skydiver discount available. I'm one of the principals of VASST.
  19. DSE
    In PP3, there are hardware issues that vary from machine to machine. Both my laptop and desktop edit the Elecard-transcode just fine from AVCHD. However, this is a *silly* *silly* workflow, IMO, if speed is a need. Shoot, transfer, transcode (takes ten times longer than the transfer) then edit with the app not natively dealing with the footage very well on some systems. This all adds up to ten times the edit length if PP3 handled AVCHD natively. BTW, you can also use Main Concept's new decoder as a plugin to Premiere, and it will decode the MTS file to an M2T file, same as Elecard, except you're doing the process 'inside' Premiere Pro3 I wish I had the answer to the "wrong" hardware configs, so I could better tell folks what to avoid. If you can manage HDV without issue, you *should* be able to manage Elecard transcodes without issue.
  20. DSE
    Says the man who previously posted: "The left has Al Franken who is certainly funnier than she is" You can't possibly be serious in suggesting that Ann Coulter is more of a comedian (comedienne?) than Al Franken? This would fall into the category of "delusional." But...it's all just semantics.
  21. DSE
    We have an Arab-speaking instructor at Skydive Utah. AFFI, rigger, T/I, S/L, paraglide instructor, BMI.
  22. DSE
    You just did...again. And that's spelled with a "C," both Christian and Constitution, but the answer to your question is no. Shows your over-presumption, much like the argued semantics of Ann's use of the word "perfect" earlier. There is nothing "semantic" about Coulter's use of the word "perfect." She (like all Christians) believes themselves to be of the "perfect" or "one true" faith. They may not believe themselves to be perfect, but do believe what they follow is perfect.
  23. DSE
    No, she is not. She is much in line with the current administration. She is not shackled by political correctness, however.
  24. DSE
    There are many documented instances of skydivers landing in trees. How many documented instances are there of skydivers landing in trees and not being recovered? Recovered in a reasonable amount of time? The Norway incident PinkFairy spoke of seems like a very long time at 2.5 hours. The one tree incident I'm personally aware of, the jumper was out of the tree in less than 20 mins. There are always hypotheticals, but at the end of the day, the SIM is generally spot-on, even if the hypotheticals might allow for what some would consider "common sense."
  25. DSE

    Noose at Columbia

    DSE replied to DSE's topic in Speakers Corner

    I'm not familiar with those incidents. It's well-known in racial history that Marshall Field's stores wouldn't allow minority patronage until the mid-60's, but I couldn't find any reference to lynchings. I did find that Marshall Field died in 1906. Can you tell me more?